[steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks

Hi, :slight_smile:

Minor addition after a few hours sleep and before starting work:

This kind of design documentation is really essential for various reasons.

What would happen if there was some kind of disaster and we were to
lose the essential core of our lead devs for some horrible reason?

Seriously ? for a distributed open source software, _that_ is your
doomsday scenario ?
If that were to happen, it would probably means that your immediate
problem would be survival: finding food and shelter. Computer software
will be the least of our problem for few generations...

We'd be scuppered. Among the other members of the LibreOffice project,
is there anyone who knows how the thing works? Is there any record,
useable by a non-geek

No amount of documentation will turn a 'non-geek' into a core dev.
Clean, well written code, with the least amount of 'trick' is the best
documentation: It is by definition accurate, complete and
authoritative. Quality that no Documentation ever equaled no matter
how much effort you put into it.

, of the state of evolution of the code base?

We say that people are free to take the source and do what they want
with it, but - at the moment - they'd have to reverse engineer the
whole code base. How "open" is that?

Reading source code is not 'reverse engineering'... That is what any
software engineer do on a daily basis to maintain existing code.
It is 'open' because anyone have access to the source code and
therefore _can_ read it and figure out how it works (or doesn't).

No, I apologise for insisting, and I realise that this initiative will
take some initial footwork, and will require on-going maintenance, but
it really should be considered to be essential work.

But I firmly believe there will be a pay-off in quite a few ways.

In any case, I'll be at the next couple of SC/BoD meetings to follow
up and discuss the idea.

There is no need for that. You can find volunteers and start working
on that without the blessing of anyone. It _is_ free software, and
_this_ is a meritocracy.
If you _do_ something in that line -- the wiki is a perfect place for
you to make that work available and gather with like minded volunteers
-- no-one will get in the way.

What do you expect the BoD to do ? issue an Edict ? Give you a
size-able budget to hire technical writer ? If your proposal attract
people from the community (our even better attract new people to it)
then your proposal will become reality, regardless of the BoD opinion.
That is how it is supposed to work.

Norbert

Hello Norbert,

Seriously ? for a distributed open source software, _that_ is your
doomsday scenario ?
If that were to happen, it would probably means that your immediate
problem would be survival: finding food and shelter. Computer software
will be the least of our problem for few generations...

Let's not get side-tracked. The contingency could be anything. But the
need for proper documentation remains. For instance, it might be
needed by a group of developers wanting to start an auxiliary project
investigating a different path for development than being followed by
the main track. BTW, this does not necessarily mean a fork, before I
hear the word used.

No amount of documentation will turn a 'non-geek' into a core dev.
Clean, well written code, with the least amount of 'trick' is the best
documentation: It is by definition accurate, complete and
authoritative. Quality that no Documentation ever equaled no matter
how much effort you put into it.

No, the very best is clean, well-written code accompanied by
good-quality documentation. Sorry, you will not convince me that
design documentation is unnecessary.

Reading source code is not 'reverse engineering'... That is what any
software engineer do on a daily basis to maintain existing code.
It is 'open' because anyone have access to the source code and
therefore _can_ read it and figure out how it works (or doesn't).

Trying to figure out from zero how a system works, because there is no
documentation of the code base, is indeed reverse engineering. A
software project that has no design documentation to enable a proper
and facilitated understanding of its code base is *not* fully
implementing the best principles of an Open Source project. Ask the
FSF for an opinion about this.

No, I apologise for insisting, and I realise that this initiative will
take some initial footwork, and will require on-going maintenance, but
it really should be considered to be essential work.

But I firmly believe there will be a pay-off in quite a few ways.

In any case, I'll be at the next couple of SC/BoD meetings to follow
up and discuss the idea.

There is no need for that. You can find volunteers and start working
on that without the blessing of anyone. It _is_ free software, and
_this_ is a meritocracy.
If you _do_ something in that line -- the wiki is a perfect place for
you to make that work available and gather with like minded volunteers
-- no-one will get in the way.

No, I am not going to s*d off and reverse engineer the code base
myself. I am asking three of our leading devs whether they would be
willing to collaborate with me on this perfectly-justifiable
initiative.

What do you expect the BoD to do ? issue an Edict ? Give you a
size-able budget to hire technical writer ? If your proposal attract
people from the community (our even better attract new people to it)
then your proposal will become reality, regardless of the BoD opinion.
That is how it is supposed to work.

I put my question to three of our leading devs, and I will wait for
them to reply to the original posts.

Sorry, Norbert, but your responses do not change my views in any way.

Your arguments resound with the sideways logic and suave patter of a
dishonest used car salesman combined with the moral values of a
larcenous banker. :smiley:

(Above to be read tongue in cheek with a smile.)

Nonetheless, have a good Sunday. :wink:

To give you an idea of the kind of collaboration I'm proposing to our
leading devs, you could read this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_document

Hi David,

David Nelson wrote (08-10-11 16:38)

In my opinion, I don't think it's best for the project to put some of
the most skilled developers to work in documentation, when other
developers can also do this task perfectly well.

It is precisely these guys who could put the most effective work into
this initiative, and probably the fastest.

I'm asking the potential
future members of the BoD to lead the way on this.

I see no link between the role of the BOD and individual members making commitments to certain day to day tasks.
Is there something why I should, in your opinion?

Documentation is
always considered to be some kind of unnecessary-to-optional
accompaniment to software -- unless you're some poor blighter trying
to understand how the thing works.

When I directed some people new on LibreOffice hacking to the various developer wiki pages, they were positively surprised.

Hmm, I do not want to say that there is no room for improvement, but as said: commitment on that topic is IMO not the item to consider when talking to an individual candidate for the BOD.
Pls note: I did not make any remark about the work done by, or commitment of, Michael or any of the other devs on this area :wink:

Regards,
Cor

Hi Cor,

I see no link between the role of the BOD and individual members making
commitments to certain day to day tasks.
Is there something why I should, in your opinion?

I don't see anything incongruous about asking a candidate in the Board
of Directors election about what commitments he might be willing to
take on if elected. In fact, what else are you supposed to ask of
candidates?

When I directed some people new on LibreOffice hacking to the various
developer wiki pages, they were positively surprised.

Surprised? Or do you mean shocked and amazed at how little developer
documentation there is about a major software project that has been
developed for so many years? :smiley:

I'm quite surprised you seem equate the very little content on the
wiki to a useful provision of design documentation. In fact, there is
little more than basic tips and instructions about compiling the code
and a few other related issues. There is also a very small amount of
API documentation at http://docs.libreoffice.org.

I'm sure you'll agree that there is absolutely no design documentation
of the kind I'm discussing (see [1]). There would be many advantages
to developing some.

I am putting this question before Michael, Thorsten and Caolan
because, AFAIK, they are full-time, senior project members (sponsored
by Novell, Suse and Red Hat, if I'm not mistaken), who most certainly
have the greatest knowledge about LibreOffice's design and code base.

They are the ideal people to work on design documentation, and I'm
volunteering to work hard alongside them (without any suggestion of
payment or sponsorship).

It would be a major contribution and example to the community if they
were willing to provide some time and expertise for this.

I don't think I need to repeat the multiple other reasons why I think
it's worth devoting some time and effort to this initiative, so I'll
sit back and wait to see what answers might be forthcoming from the
three BoD candidates I was originally addressing. :wink:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_document

Hi David,

David Nelson wrote (09-10-11 13:30)

I don't see anything incongruous about asking a candidate in the Board
of Directors election about what commitments he might be willing to
take on if elected. In fact, what else are you supposed to ask of
candidates?

Taking care for documentation, is not a task of an individual member of the BOD, as far as I know.

Hello Norbert,

No amount of documentation will turn a 'non-geek' into a core dev.
Clean, well written code, with the least amount of 'trick' is the best
documentation: It is by definition accurate, complete and
authoritative. Quality that no Documentation ever equaled no matter
how much effort you put into it.

No, the very best is clean, well-written code accompanied by
good-quality documentation. Sorry, you will not convince me that
design documentation is unnecessary.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm merely giving you my
opinion, grounded on having been in the trenches, designing software
and writing code for a living for the past for 20 years...
Anyway, I am apparently in good company: http://kerneltrap.org/node/5725

"A "spec" is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big
enough to be useful _and_ accurate." Linus Torvalds

I'd also refer you to :
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm#ProjectSuccess

[..] code base is *not* fully
implementing the best principles of an Open Source project. Ask the
FSF for an opinion about this.

I've been hacking gnu make recently... please do point me to such
documentation (no, not the _user_ documentation, the supposedly
indispensable 'design spec' )
so... I don't know about their opinion, but I do know about their practice...

No, I am not going to s*d off and reverse engineer the code base
myself. I am asking three of our leading devs whether they would be
willing to collaborate with me on this perfectly-justifiable
initiative.

We must have a different definition of 'collaboration' than me.
If you you are "not going to s*d off (what-ever that means) and
reverse engineer the code base" yourself, it sound that you conception
of collaboration is 'do as I said... I'm watching', or as we say in
french 'Armons-nous et partez"

What do you expect the BoD to do ? issue an Edict ? Give you a
size-able budget to hire technical writer ? If your proposal attract
people from the community (our even better attract new people to it)
then your proposal will become reality, regardless of the BoD opinion.
That is how it is supposed to work.

I put my question to three of our leading devs, and I will wait for
them to reply to the original posts.

Then this is the wrong list... if you want to ask devs, you should do
that on the dev mailing list.

Sorry, Norbert, but your responses do not change my views in any way.

I have no such hope. I merely re-stated to you the reality of a
volunteer based effort. If you want something to happen, you need to
roll-up your sleeves and _make_ it happen.
Trying to extract election promises out of some people, on ground
completely unrelated to the office they seek, is not going to get you
there.

Your arguments resound with the sideways logic and suave patter of a
dishonest used car salesman combined with the moral values of a
larcenous banker. :smiley:

(Above to be read tongue in cheek with a smile.)

You can add all the smiles you want to an insult it is still one.

Norbert

Norbert Thiebaud wrote (09-10-11 14:25)

Trying to extract election promises out of some people, on ground
completely unrelated to the office they seek, is not going to get you
there.

Correct.
I would assume (have seem some mails swiftly after posting my initial contribution to this thread) that there has been some exchange on the usefulness of documentation and such.
Would people like to continue: IMO not on this list.

Regards,

You're asking a development question that's not among the duties of a member of the Board of Directors. You're obviously welcome to ask community members about your project proposal, but I suggest you wait until after the election. Appropriate questions for candidates relate to their suitability to perform the duties of a Director of The Document Foundation[1], which definitely and intentionally do not include developing the code or the documentation.

S.

Hi,

Norbert Thiebaud wrote (09-10-11 14:25)

Trying to extract election promises out of some people, on ground
completely unrelated to the office they seek, is not going to get you
there.

Correct.
I would assume (have seem some mails swiftly after posting my initial
contribution to this thread) that there has been some exchange on the
usefulness of documentation and such.
Would people like to continue: IMO not on this list.

Norbert, it would be good if you read things carefully and accurately.
Cor, it would be good if you did not jump to conclusions.
Norbert and Cor, it would be polite and in keeping with the bylaws and
election rules if you allowed me to put my questions to the candidates
without butting in.
Thank you, guys.

Hi Simon,

You're asking a development question that's not among the duties of a member of the Board of Directors. You're obviously welcome to ask community members about your project proposal, but I suggest you wait until after the election. Appropriate questions for candidates relate to their suitability to perform the duties of a Director of The Document Foundation[1], which definitely and intentionally do not include developing the code or the documentation.

The candidates invited questions. I am asking mine. Are you guys censoring me?

I am indicating that questions about development plans and intentions fall outside the scope of questions for Board candidates as regards their suitability for election, as the role of directors[1] does not include development tasks. I'm inviting you to note that observation and save your valid but out-of-scope question for later. I am not censoring you at this point as I hope you will choose to desist voluntarily.

Thanks

S.

Hi Simon,

I am indicating that questions about development plans and intentions fall outside the scope of questions for Board candidates as regards their suitability for election, as the role of directors[1] does not include development tasks. I'm inviting you to note that observation and save your valid but out-of-scope question for later. I am not censoring you at this point as I hope you will choose to desist voluntarily.

I have put my questions to the candidates. I am hoping that they are
going to answer.

I object to your arbitrary judgement that my questions are out of scope.

They are perfectly reasonable, perfectly friendly and perfectly
courteous questions, in response to an invitation to ask questions.

I hope you are not going to blemish this first election with
thoughtlessness and unnecessary declarations that go against the
freedom of expression that the bylaws stand for.

It would have been so much simpler if the candidates had been allowed
to answer for themselves.

Hello David,

Hi Simon,

I am indicating that questions about development plans and intentions fall outside the scope of questions for Board candidates as regards their suitability for election, as the role of directors[1] does not include development tasks. I'm inviting you to note that observation and save your valid but out-of-scope question for later. I am not censoring you at this point as I hope you will choose to desist voluntarily.

I have put my questions to the candidates. I am hoping that they are
going to answer.

I object to your arbitrary judgement that my questions are out of scope.

They are perfectly reasonable, perfectly friendly and perfectly
courteous questions, in response to an invitation to ask questions.

I hope you are not going to blemish this first election with
thoughtlessness and unnecessary declarations that go against the
freedom of expression that the bylaws stand for.

It would have been so much simpler if the candidates had been allowed
to answer for themselves.

No big and high words please :slight_smile:
What we're trying to say is that the functions of a BoD member do not
relate to these matters. Your question is indeed valid but is simply out
of context, because it is not up to the BoD members to decide these
questions or to take part in this kind of work because they would be BoD
members. That's all...

Best,
Charles.

I'm disappointed, Charles. Quite disappointed...

Hey, cool it. No-one is stopping them answering; I'm explaining why they are
not. Please read what I wrote calmly and, if you still don't understand the
point, get back to me.

S.

David Nelson wrote (09-10-11 14:55)

Norbert, it would be good if you read things carefully and accurately.
Cor, it would be good if you did not jump to conclusions.

David, it would be good if you just understood the point :wink:

Norbert and Cor, it would be polite and in keeping with the bylaws and
election rules if you allowed me to put my questions to the candidates
without butting in.
Thank you, guys.

It is not about stopping you or anyone else to ask questions. It is about whether this question is relevant for the elections.

Trying to explain it again in other words:
The BOD is about steering the foundation.
Might the opinion in the BOD be, that there is a problem in e.g. the documentation area, then they will do what is within their means to improve the work in that area.
Whether an individual wants to work on documentation, is not related to ones candidacy/membership of the BOD.

It might be relevant to know if an individual finds documentation important, and maybe also if she thinks improvement in that area is a good idea. But again, that is not the same as that individual working on (in this example) on documentation.
On the contrary: if the BOD thinks more documentation is needed, they try to find others (i.e. people not in the role as BOD member) willing to step in and do the job.

Cheers,

Cor,

Apparently you enjoy an argument. :smiley:

I wasn't going to write further to this thread, but apparently you
need to have the last word, and I don't see why you should. I'll
explain why below.

My only mistake in writing to the candidates was that I continued in
the threads they started on this SC list, and election rule #6 says,
"All discussion related to the elections should be held on
discuss@documentfoundation.org. Members are invited to ask questions
to one or all candidates on that list."

But that's maybe the candidates' fault, too, because I guess they
should have posted their candidate statements to the discuss list
rather than the SC list. No matter, further discussions about the
original subject can be continued there.

However, I just re-read the election rules and the bylaws, and there
is absolutely nothing to say that the questions I asked Thorsten,
Michael and Caolan were out of order. So you have absolutely no
justification in trying to lay down the rules about this.

This is an election, right? And the candidates are asking for our
votes and invited our questions, right? So I would say I'm entitled to
ask them whatever is close to my concerns and interests. And, for
their part, they have the right to answer what they like, or even not
to answer at all if that's their preference.

The rules that we all have to keep to are the rules of courtesy,
friendliness and decent behavior. From that viewpoint, I'm perfectly
within bounds.

So why do you feel that I'm only allowed to broach subjects that *you*
feel are acceptable? Don't you feel you're a little out of line here?
Because I definitely think you are.

I'm rather disappointed by the development of this thread.

And I don't think it was a welcome event in the first BoD election.

Please allow me to remind you of some relevant clauses of the community bylaws:

"There are no differences of equality between Members, even though
certain Members may be granted particular powers, appointed to certain
roles and responsibilities, and entrusted with access to certain
Community resources. Every Member is expected to always remember that
he/she is part of an egalitarian Community of which a key guiding
principle is public service, and that membership is a status which is
truly earned through contributive work, not something acquired by
unproductive activities such as idle posting to mailing lists and
forums, etc.

Every Member is expected to deal with other Community Members and with
our end users with courtesy, forbearance, objectivity,
open-mindedness, friendliness, understanding, patience and goodwill."

I don't think you're putting all that into practice.

Therefore, I'd propose that we don't post further to this thread and,
if you want to continue the discussion, we should continue on the
discuss list.

Sigh... We've lost many contributors to the project over the past 8-10
months, but I had thought that the upside of that shedding of
interested community members was that communication within the project
had improved to a more-mature level than the flaming discussions of
the first few months...

Please read the above as meant in a friendly manner, although I am
exercising my right to intellectually disagree with you. :slight_smile:

I regret that I won't be at the conference, or I would definitely buy
you a beer to show you that there are no hard feelings on my side. :wink:

Hi David,

David Nelson wrote (09-10-11 22:55)

I regret that I won't be at the conference, or I would definitely buy
you a beer to show you that there are no hard feelings on my side. :wink:

Thanks, would really love to have that beer. But we can do it on a next opportunity.

And I really have to apologise for not being able to explain myself clear enough of course.
Kind regards,

Hi David,

I'm hoping to see from three of our leading devs who are candidates
for the BoD how committed they are to *Open Source* software. :wink:

  So I just saw this thread; and of course the topic is worth responding
to. Firstly, let me say that I believe this issue per-se is nearly 100%
orthogonal to board membership, and how committed anyone is to Open
Source software ( and as a semantic nit-pick I'm committed to Free
Software in contrast to Open Source ;-). But perhaps by asking and
responding to it, we can see something of my stumbling approach to such
questions :slight_smile:

Open the doors wider, and more people might come in.

  They *might* :slight_smile: here is the judgement call. Your question to me boils
down to:

  * Will you dedicate a substantial part of your time to
    addressing my perceived blocker to attracting developers ?

  Here are some of your quotes:

  "But I am convinced that it will bring real fruits ..."
  "This kind of design documentation is really essential ...
  "... they'd have to reverse engineer the whole code base.
  "How "open" is that?
  "I also feel it will enhance the project's image and credibility

  This is your opinion of course, and one I do not entirely share. It
seems to be a firmly held one - and I like that :slight_smile: The more people we
have that are passionate about improving something - the better life
will be: assuming we get our governance right and can translate that
into action. If you profoundly believe that there is serious, systemic
risk from not having (more) code / overview documentation - then you
should -really- do something about it, and I'd like to help you do it.
Personally I see other more major risks in other places (though many of
them are getting addressed), and perhaps this will be my biggest one
soon - who knows.

  However - what you should -not- do is to harass other people to try to
make them meet your need. Instead to winsomely and gently try to
persuade them that you're right, and lead by example. So far, personally
I'm not overly concerned by this area -because- the initial fixes people
do to enter the project tend not to require this level of design
overview. Subsequently they make relationships and can ask questions of
people, and learn more, and as they go deeper (reading more code), the
structures start to become more obvious. So I don't see a huge issue
here, we have an on-ramp with a reasonable gradient. Furthermore, I
(personally) almost never read documentation - only code or headers or
specs - and the best hackers I know tend to do the same.

  Here is what I recommend: if you are truly passionate about this and
worried about it, then I suspect my (and Norbert, and other developer's)
relative lack of concern will only annoy you :slight_smile: So - I suggest that you
focus that annoyance into action: gather together existing sources of
information on code overviews make a wiki / launching page that talks
about the code structure and put it somewhere where people can find it
if they want it (a link in the top-level code README perhaps ?). I'd
resist putting that on the easy hacks page - since "here is the monster"
type documentation can put people off and is not necessary for easy
hacks.

  Then - of course, we have an existing Easy Hack to improve:

  http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Code_Overview

  IIRC, which incidentally needs re-structuring, now the code is not
packaged up into those separate repositories. Note - that I started this
page and added the easy hack to improve it :slight_smile: so I do deeply care about
code overviews & good docs [ incidentally, I started the page this was
derived from in the OO.o wiki - so, at some level I feel your pain ;-]

  Personally, I'd like that information (and more) in a README file in
each top level source-code directory as well: transferring what little
we have in the wiki, into text files would be a valuable low-skill task
too: perhaps this could be your first code commit ? :slight_smile:

  "I am certain that you will assure us that you support
   openness of the source code of LibreOffice."

  Of course ! but primarily I am eager to ensure that people are
liberated to do what -they- consider most important, and there are
few-to-no barriers / processes / annoyances in the way to doing that. So
- I'm most happy to help you succeed in creating relevant, useful
developer documentation: but I'd invest my time as an enabler, not as a
primary author.

  Failing that, I suspect the question behind the question is: how can I
get stuck into fixing XYZ bug that annoys me, and of course we'd love to
help out with that through the existing mentoring process - but it's
best done by posting to the dev list / poking on IRC.

  Does that help ? I hope there are some concrete steps above that would
improve the situation, that are easy for you to get stuck into, and I'd
love to get your first patch into git :slight_smile: As/when these are done lets
sync - there is much more that can be easily improved here (as
everywhere).

  All the best,

    Michael.

PS. wrt attracting developers, I'd love it if the big "please donate"
button on the web-page went to a page that didn't seem to say
(erroneously) "we are rich, don't bother supporting us" (of course in
more words ;-). If we had more cash on-hand with SPI (eg.) we could fund
a rather interesting program to attract developers I'm looking at
now :wink: No idea if you can help fix that one.